“Big enough questions” are the vehicles through which we think about “the point of it all”—and not just in the abstract, but for us as particular individuals. They are the routes through which people come to discern their vocation. Big-enough questions can be perennial, or they can be relatively specific to one's time in history. They can be pertinent to anyone's life, or they can be more specific to particular walks of life and disciplines of inquiry. They can seem focused directly on oneself, or they can be explicitly about the world around us. In any case, they demand us to slow down, to pause and ponder.
They push anyone who asks them to develop some sense of meaning and purpose for their lives, bringing that person cognitively and affectively into connection with the world in a way that matters. They push students, in particular, to begin to situate themselves reflectively in a world that calls for their “thoughtful inquiry, service, leadership, and care—for other people, for their communities, and for the earth.”
For more reflection on such questions and the role they play in student development, see Sharon Daloz Parks' address at PLU in fall of 2003, “Big Enough Questions: Seeking Meaning and Purpose in a Complex World.”
The phrase, and many of the preceding questions, are from Sharon Daloz Parks, Big Questions, Worthy Dreams (Jossey-Bass, 2000), pp. 137-138.
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